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Civic Area Vision plan winners deserve recognition

By Eric Scott Worthington

Posted:
02/06/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

Thank you for writing the article on the Boulder Civic Area Vision plans that I read with great interest last Wednesday morning. However, may I suggest that you should have also mentioned the other six winners as well? Even though the winner for the Civic Area's "Best Transformative Placemaking" was Carl A. Worthington's Team, I know that these other winners and people that presented their visions did so after weeks of labor and covering their own expenses. I found it surprising and unfortunate that only the Grand Prize winner was named in the paper, even though seven awards were given out.

I write to you about this because I have seen this firsthand all my life. I am the middle son, age 53, of Carl A. Worthington, legendary architect, master and urban planner. Carl was instrumental in the development of The Downtown Pearl Street Mall, Boulder's Open Space Program, the future Superior Town Center, the Westminster Promenade, the Denver Tech Center and the Master Plan for the Capitol City, Kigali, in Rwanda to name just a few of his achievements.

Boulder has been fortunate to have such a talented visionary as Carl in Boulder since the early 1960s. As a son, I'm partial, but it would be nice that events covered are complete and accurate. My father would never ask to be mentioned because he's too modest; but as his son I have always recognized how the real story often does not get completely told. It's always better to talk about the real story while they are still with us instead of at a service when they are gone.

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For example, the Camera wrote articles a year or two ago about Carl's work in Rwanda, Africa. It mentioned a meeting that took place with Rwanda President Paul Kagame and the previous owner of the Denver Tech Center, John Dick. The Rwandan president, who was the army general that helped stop the genocide and later was elected to be president, summoned John Dick who is a very well known development consultant/entrepreneur around the world to be his advisor. The president told him about the new vision he had for turning Rwanda into something special that would help erase the scars left by the genocide. He spoke about turning Rwanda into the jewel of Africa. After listening to this vision that the president had for Rwanda, Mr. Dick said "We have to go to America and talk to Carl Worthington." However the Camera's article stated that Mr. Dick said "We have to go to America and talk to OZ Architecture." John Dick did not say you need to talk to OZ architecture as the article read instead he said we need to go to America and talk to Carl Worthington who was and is a consultant to OZ Architecture. I think that this too was an unfortunate omission.

I imagine all the other winners who were not mentioned in your article on Wednesday morning were disappointed that their names were not mentioned. I think the people of Boulder would want to know who these talented winners/visionaries are, by mentioning their names after they contributed to making Boulder a better place, they too deserve to be recognized and to at least have their names mentioned in the article as well.

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